


Before the day is done

by FangedAngel



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-08
Updated: 2012-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-29 04:57:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/316073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FangedAngel/pseuds/FangedAngel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adrian is woken up from the nightmarish world he's stuck into.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before the day is done

**Author's Note:**

> No harm intended, no truth attempted. Title stolen from FatM's Seven Devils. Go into this with a very open mind :)

Breathing doesn't come easy in this nightmarish landscape that his life has turned into. He tries to remember how to do it, the once-familiar pattern of inhalation and exhalation, but there's never enough oxygen in his lungs. He feels like his world is still, blank, dead, blurred at the edges where it had once been perfectly clear. He knows that he's been on the path leading to this world since China, but now that he's stuck in it, he doesn't feel even remotely prepared.

He can't breathe, and it hurts. He's stuck in limbo with all his fears, all his doubts, all his sins choking him, making him forget everything, making him forget every other feeling apart from this looming horror. He spends Christmas alone, unable to take his family's worrying into account, unable to reply to the various messages from his lawyers that are haunting his voicemail. His usual routine has been lost somewhere along his way, and all he can do is try to exist, try to live, try to be a shadow of his former self, at least. Whenever he dozes off, more nightmares are waiting, and whatever he eats tastes like ash and dust and decay. He went to his former team's Christmas party, knowing that he was already out of it. Vijay tried to comfort him, tried to offer excuses, but Adrian can tolerate no more excuses lately. The smiles he'd offered were forced, as fake as the glittery surroundings. He'd ignored Paul, he'd ignored the worried looks Nico had sent his way. They didn't make any difference, in the end, and Adrian's reached the end of his patience long ago.

All those supportive smiles and words, all the moments of praise from the team during the season, they'd all accounted for nothing. In the end, it had been about money, yes, as usual, but it was mostly about China. Sponsors will never appreciate tainted reputations, after all. In the end, knowing didn't help.

He welcomes the New Year alone, staring at the shadows of fireworks on his ceiling, thinking about the flow of champagne all around him, and how sick the stench of it makes him now. He thinks of shattered glass and spattered blood, and his stomach's in knots and he can't breathe. He spends the night curled on the sofa, and morning finds him still staring blankly into space. His world is made of browns and blacks now, of decomposing matter, of burnt memories. Dust is steadily gathering on the lid of the closed piano. He remembers the comfort of the keys, but he can't bring himself to even look at them, let alone touch them. Music had once been pure to him, and now he can't play, because it's the only thing he hasn't managed to taint yet. He'd rather lose the comfort it used to bring than destroy it. It's not the same, now. He wonders if it will ever be the same again. He wonders if anything will ever feel the same again, if he'll ever escape this world, if he'll ever be saved.

He should prepare for his upcoming trial, but he can't bring himself to relive that night, he can't bring himself to relive all that happened afterwards, and how badly wrong everything went. He wants to wake up to his own life again. He wants his team back and his family back and his friends back, he wants more than the artificial support he's been shown. He wants everything to have meaning again. He wants to create music again, he wants the world to have colours again. He wants the taste of ash in his mouth to disappear. He wants to breathe. He wants the nightmare to end and everything to be as it should be.

For the first time, his mansion doesn't feel like home. It feels foreign, unwelcoming, a strange dark place. He misses his mother and his father, but his home has been divided since he's been a child, and he doesn't know which of his parents to turn to, despite having lived with his father most of his life. They can't make the nightmare end. This is his life, and these are the consequences for his actions. He has no home to run to, no warm, safe place to welcome him. He's stuck here, with all his mistakes, and he can't break free of them. His phone's memory slowly starts running out, the screen silently lighting up with every new text and every missed call, but none of them matter, none of them mean anything.

It's the fourth day of the year and he's shivering on the floor. He never bothered to turn the heating on when he came back and now he's starting to feel the cold. His fingers fiddle with the laptop on the coffee table, the laptop that's been asleep for days. He can't face the e-mails anymore than he can face the texts and the calls, but he feels a dangerous sort of pull towards it. Instead, he moves away. He turns the heating on, and takes a long hot shower and tries to shake off all the horror, all the nightmares digging sharp claws in his shoulders.

He walks around the unlit sitting room like some sort of wraith, pacing, his fingertips aching with the need to caress the keys of the mute piano. It's almost dark outside, but the room is finally warming up, and he walks around, trying to put some kind of order in his thoughts, trying to breathe, in and out, trying to wake up.

The sound of the doorbell strikes a chaotic sort of panic in him. He wants to pretend that he's not at home, but the ring is insistent. He knows that the person on the other side of the door had to make it through the gate, the gate that they would have needed a code for.

He's already unlocking the door when he realises that he's only wearing a bathrobe, ironically white, but it's too late to do anything about it. What he sees when the door is open makes no sense, and he can only move out of the way, the only invitation he can give.

When the door is locked again, Adrian leans against it, his thoughts even more jumbled than before. Nico shakes his head at him, a soft smile on his face, worry in the corner of his eyes. Adrian wonders what he sees, wonders how he looks like after days of ignoring the mirrors in the mansion, but then Nico touches him, almost innocently, fingers brushing over the collar of the bathrobe.

A sort of shell-shocked anger rises inside Adrian, and he wants to move away, to ask Nico what he thinks he's doing, but he doesn't. He stands there, thrown in the maelstrom of another sort of panic entirely, looking at Nico, who's smiling at him, looking at Nico, who's touching him, skin-warm fingers too close to touching Adrian's neck, his pulse point, his collarbone.

He doesn't understand the meaning of this. He doesn't understand when he ever asked for this, if he ever did. But in the barely lit, cold mansion that's too big for just one person and multiple artworks, he finds himself with no questions to ask. This is just another part of the surrealism of this world, and he's willing to go along with it because it's the only aspect that holds no fear for him.

Nico takes his hand, commenting on the coldness of his skin, and Nico shakes his head again, leading the way. Adrian follows, Nico's blonde hair bright in the gloomy atmosphere of the house, Nico's blue eyes holding a promise. Adrian doesn't know what it all means, but he's begged for salvation too much to ignore this, too much to turn Nico away.

Nico leads the way to Adrian's bedroom on the first floor, and Nico's fingers stay wrapped around Adrian's wrist. The temperature in the bedroom is only a few degrees above freezing, and Nico sighs. His lips form a tight line and Adrian wants to apologise, but he doesn't. He doesn't do any of the things he would normally do, further proof of how drastically everything has changed, of how much this world has taken from him. Then again, if he would be his normal self, they wouldn't be here. He wouldn't have allowed this to happen. It's much too complicated, much too dangerous, but he's got nothing more to lose.

Nico kisses him, palms flat over Adrian's chest. Nico kisses him like he's thought about it, like he's planned this for ages, and Adrian kisses back, because nothing else matters, nothing but this warmth, the warmth of Nico's mouth on his, the warmth of Nico's fingers finding Adrian's, lacing together, the warmth of the words Nico whispers in his ear.

"Here for you, Adrian, always here for you, you shouldn't have gone through this alone at all, you stubborn bastard," Nico says, in the pause between two kisses, and each time is better, like they fit together, somehow, in this warped combination, this dark corner of reality.

Each kiss feels different, but real in a way that Adrian hasn't had for weeks, perhaps even months. He doesn't feel lost here, with Nico kissing him, with Nico on his knees, with the bathrobe being pulled off his shoulders, left to pool around Adrian's feet. Adrian feels both warm and cold at once, the hands on him driving him mad, his mind unable to deal with all the touches after so many weeks of sensory deprivation. The lack of colour in his nightmarish realm fades now, confronted with Nico's blue eyes, and Nico's pink lips. The taste of ash in his mouth is replaced by his own taste on Nico's tongue, by the taste of Nico's fingers, by the taste of the curve of Nico's shoulder. The name leaves him in a gasp, and it's a plea for more, it's a plea for anything. Nico pushes him on the bed, where the sheets have had time to warm. Nico kneels between Adrian's legs, and Nico kisses his forehead, his temple, his cheekbone, murmuring in his ear, in this language that they share. Nico bites down on the soft skin of Adrian's inner thigh and Adrian's moan is stolen by Nico's lips, and Adrian thinks, for a second, before the warmth of Nico's mouth takes all thoughts away from him again, that he should have known, he should have noticed, he should have expected this. He's been too blinded by this world he's been thrown into to see Nico, to see the look in Nico's eyes and the tight line of his jaw, the worry that shadows Nico's brow. He should have seen this, he should have known. The apologies that spill from his lips in a frenzied rush are kissed away, brushed away by the pad of Nico's thumb, but he needs Nico to know, he needs Nico to understand.

"It's alright. It's over now," Nico’s whisper, Nico’s promise, and Adrian wants to nod and shake his head at the same time.

Adrian knows that he was wrong, in so many ways, about Nico's youth, about Nico's friendship. He was wrong when he didn't see this, wrong when he didn't notice that Nico's friendship morphed into something else, wrong when he didn't notice that PR duties weren't the only thing bringing Nico and him together. Adrian was angry with Nico for not taking sides in the battle between Lewis and him, he was angry with Nico for not taking sides in the battle between Paul and him. He was angry, and he didn't notice. But Nico's here now, and Adrian tangles his fingers in Nico's hair, still not used to how short it is lately. Nico's here now, kissing Adrian with none of the inexperience Adrian had attributed to him in his thoughts. Neither of them is inexperienced, neither of them too young anymore.

Adrian doesn't notice exactly when the nightmare dissolves into a dream that borders reality, a reality that seems so strange, unfolding under his eyes, that he can barely grasp it. He just lets it happen, arching into Nico's mouth on him, arching into Nico's hands on him, hungry for more, desperate for more. Nico looks up at him where he's kneeling between Adrian's thighs, and Nico looks down at him from where he's lying next to Adrian, propped on one elbow, all long arms and long limbs and Adrian hasn't noticed before how well they match in height. Adrian reaches up to Nico, claiming his mouth this time, Nico's moan both surprised and pleased, and he tugs on Nico's hair as gently as he can at the same time. The leisurely pace they were taking seems to have been a sort of waiting, waiting for Adrian to finally wake up and react, to finally get rid of the nightmare that doesn't want to relinquish its hold on him.

They move in sync, somehow, matching Adrian's hunger with their own. Nico leaves a mark on Adrian's shoulder, where it won't be seen, and Nico leaves the mark of his fingers on the skin covering Adrian's hips as he takes Adrian in deeper. Adrian doesn't know which of them to reach for anymore, doesn't know which of them to beg for. His words are nonsensical, and his cheeks are burning because he’s never been this exposed, never this out of control, never this desperate for it. This is a different version of him, the one who went through the nightmare, the one who stopped making music, the one who locked himself away in a dark, cold mansion. He’s different now, and he wants like he’s never wanted before, like he’s never allowed himself to before. Having nothing left to lose means he can have whatever he wants. He can even have this, Nico’s fingers inside him, wet with Adrian’s saliva combined with lube; he can have Nico’s fingers around him, stroking, slippery with precome. Adrian can have whatever he wants, all of it at once, now, and he asks for it, his voice breaking, raw. Nico meets Nico’s eyes and something passes between them, an agreement of sorts, and Adrian wonders, even though he has no coherency left, at how they talked about this, how they planned this.

He's been friends with Nico for years, and he's been friends with Nico for months, and it doesn't matter which of them it is, because he wants both of them, he'd have both of them, but when he says it out loud Nico shakes his head at him, eyes narrowed in amusement, and Nico laughs and suddenly Adrian's not the only one blushing. Nico kisses him the exact same moment Nico enters him and the world bursts in bright colours behind his eyelids and Adrian kisses Nico back, sloppily, his hips meeting Nico's, and they create rhythm together, the rhythm Adrian's missed, the rhythm he controls. Nico's fingers are around him again, part of the movement. Adrian reaches up to both of them, and their mouths meet, wet and warm and sloppy, and it's warped perfection, but it's all he needs. It doesn't take long, not with Adrian feeling Nico's gasps fan over his lips, not with Nico whispering so many filthy things, things he would never have thought Nico would know, while rubbing against Adrian's hip, every sharp intake of breath audible, part of a delirious composition.

He's aware only of them, his body somewhere in between them, meaningless, theirs, and he says something that Nico replies to with a choked yesyesyes, and that Nico replies to by moving faster, moving like he's had Adrian countless times before, like Adrian's always given him this. When he draws in a shuddering breath, it hurts like a first time, and he chokes on air and Nico draws comforting patterns along Adrian's chest with his fingers. Trailing lower, Nico's hand curls around Nico's hip, an impulse that makes Nico pick up the pace until it's an impossible staccato rhythm, until Adrian arches his back and comes, kissed by Nico, held by Nico, surrounded by them. For a second, they're all he knows.

 

When Adrian wakes, the normal colours of his world have been restored, and his eyes hurt while they adjust. The air smells like Nico’s cologne and Nico’s aftershave, and he can still taste them, the salt of their skin on his lips. His phone is vibrating on the nightstand, and he doesn't remember ever bringing it upstairs. He feels sore, but he also feels better than he has in weeks, alive and ready to take the world back into his hands, ready to compose the rhythm that will rule the following days. Sunlight is trying to filter through the curtains, bright and welcoming, and he looks at the lit screen of his phone, the 'meet us for breakfast?' providing temptation he cannot refuse. Breathing comes easy on this morning, and the landscape outside his window is as real as it’s ever been.


End file.
